Mad Hatter

CHAPTER 16

Albert Moscrop had been back in London almost a week when Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray called at the shop. For a moment he failed to recognise them; in his mind they were so firmly connected with his recent short vacation in Brighton that it was as preposterous as if the bathing-machine woman or the bicycle-boy had appeared in Oxford Street. Quite understandably he looked up from a lens he was polishing and simply saw two gentlemen customers. In his professional way he was deciding from their manner and appearance which counter was most appropriate to greet them from, the sporting or the astronomical, when Cribb’s brisk salutation jolted him into realisation.

‘Ah, Mr. Moscrop. Good to see you.’

He nodded vigorously. ‘You too, Sergeant. And the constable, of course.’

‘Smart shop,’ said Cribb. ‘Carpeted, too.’

‘Thank you. Did you-er-’

‘-wish to see you in private? If you please,’ said Cribb.

They passed through a baize door into the rear of the shop. Instruments of every description were ranged about the small room. They had to move a large brass telescope before there was room to sit down on three stools.

‘A most unexpected pleasure, Sergeant.’

‘What was that?’ said Cribb. ‘Oh, our visit. Strictly business, Mr. Moscrop, strictly business. Possibly you heard of the-er-decease of young Guy Prothero.’

‘At Horsham. Yes, I had got to hear of it. What a beastly tragedy for the family! An attack of asthma was responsible, I understand.’

‘So we’re told, sir, so we’re told.’

‘The boy was certainly a sufferer from periodic attacks of asthma. His mother told me so. I think that was why they tolerated his unsociable behaviour. I am sure that they were most solicitous about his health. He did disobey his father and indulge in secret bathing, of course, which might have upset him in some way, but there is a school of thought which says that nothing but good can come from sea-bathing. Now that I am back in London, I rather regret not having swum from the beach myself. I did take the plunge at Brill’s, as I believe I told you.’

‘You did, sir. There was something else you told me, another thing that Mrs. Prothero mentioned to you, I believe, and I want to ask you once again if you’re quite sure about it.’

‘Certainly, Sergeant. It must be something important if you have come here to verify it.’

‘Could be very important, sir. When you made your first state- ment in Brighton you told me the period of time the Protheros were proposing to spend there. D’you remember, sir?’

‘Indeed I do. Zena told me when we first met. She said they had escaped from the practice at Dorking for three weeks. I distinctly remember remarking that I was planning to stay for the same length of time. Our holidays did not quite coincide, however, as they had already spent a week in Brighton before I arrived.’

‘Three weeks,’ said Cribb. ‘Yet the doctor and the boy stayed for four.’

‘Come to think of it, they must have. They were still in Brighton during my third week. What a singular thing. Perhaps the tragic passing of their servant delayed them. There are things one is obliged to attend to on occasions like that.’

Cribb shook his head. ‘Everything could have been settled in a week, yet they stayed for fifteen days after Bridget’s death. My investigation was going on all the while. Seems unlikely they were having such a jolly time that they couldn’t bear to leave.’

‘A week would represent a sizeable sacrifice of income for a doctor in practice,’ said Moscrop.

‘Good point. And so far as we know, the locum was standing in for three weeks, not four. But for some reason the doctor and his son extended their holiday by another week. When they did leave, it was a full two weeks after Mrs. Prothero and Jason. Important things must have kept them in Brighton.’

‘But, Sergeant, I was observing Dr. Prothero almost without interruption. His daily routine continued unchanged, except for the day when he met his wife at the Dyke. The fourth week was a repetition of the others. There was no social function that he attended and the only appointments he had were with Miss Floyd-Whittingham.’

‘She wasn’t his reason for staying,’ said Cribb, more to himself than Moscrop. ‘He had more important things on his mind-principally Guy. The boy was liable to be arrested any time. Yet they stayed for another week, and Prothero did nothing and saw no one except his lady-friend. That’s hard to account for. Then, at the end of the week, the boy conveniently died. Not at Dorking, you notice; that would open all sorts of sinister possibilities. At a hotel they’d never visited before, in the presence of an independent witness. “Asthma” on the death certificate and Dr. Prothero’s problems were neatly solved. The question I have to answer-if I choose to feel suspicious, that is-is why it didn’t happen a week before. And I think I’ll take my question to Harley Street.’

Thackeray jerked up from his notes. ‘Harley Street, Sarge?’

‘That’s our next call, Thackeray. I’ve made an appointment with one of London’s foremost specialists in asthma. We’re grateful for your help, Mr. Moscrop. If ever the Yard decides to equip its officers with telescopes, I’ll put a word in, depend upon it.’

His mind reeling with the implications of what Cribb had said, Moscrop escorted the detectives through the shop to their cab.

The inquest on the late Guy Prothero the following week established that he died from natural causes. The medical evidence, the coroner pointed out, could lead to no other conclusion than that the boy was the victim of a chronic attack of asthma.

‘You wouldn’t object if I walked with you to the station?’ said Cribb to Dr. Prothero, as they came down the court steps together. ‘I presume you’re going back to Dorking.’

‘I am, as it happens,’ said Prothero, without much warmth. ‘By all means let us go that way together.’ He set off at a rate suggesting he had no intention of prolonging the conversation.

‘I’ll be getting the same train,’ said Cribb airily. ‘I go to London, though. The next one should be the 4.23 if Bradshaw can be relied upon.’

Prothero put his hand to his watch-chain, but Cribb added, ‘There’s no need to check. There’s a jeweller’s opposite with a clock outside. D’you see? We’ve three-quarters of an hour in hand. Time for a good yarn, eh, Doctor?’

The prospect seemed to have a discouraging effect on Prothero, so Cribb went on, ‘You’ll be satisfied with the verdict, I dare say. It quite upheld your own opinion. Disposed of any doubts entertained by certain persons, eh? I should have known better than to question the opinion of a recognised authority, but, there, I’m trained to be a sceptic. Now that I’ve read your papers on the subject, I’m somewhat better informed.’

‘You have read my monographs?’ said Prothero, in surprise.

‘Every one, Doctor. There’s a very good library at the Royal College of Physicians. I ain’t a member, but the Yard has certain connections with the profession, you know, and I can usually obtain what I want by mentioning a word in the right quarter. You make a regular splash in the index, having written so much. No trouble at all finding your writings. Very readable they are, too.’

‘Thank you, but I had no idea-‘

‘That I was so interested? Insatiable curiosity, Doctor. It’s a kind of habit. If I meet a man I like to know all about him. Not that I was reading your papers only, you understand. I had nearly a week in that library. Shall we cross? Devil of a lot of traffic. Market day, would you say?’

‘Medicine must interest you,’ Prothero observed, when they had safely negotiated the road.

‘I find it irresistible,’ said Cribb. ‘When there’s a problem to solve, that is. Take the case of your son’s unfortunate death, for instance. Now the inquest’s over and everything’s settled, you might be surprised I should ever have harboured any uncertainty about the circumstances of his-er-going.’

‘Oh, I can understand that any sudden death must be accounted for,’ said Prothero, generously.

‘We know that he murdered your servant Bridget,’ Cribb said, as if he were talking about the weather. ‘Probably strangled her, although we never found enough of her to tell for certain. It was strangling that nearly killed Jane Brett, the servant girl at the Eastbourne school, wasn’t it? It must have been a regular nightmare to you and your wife. No wonder your memory of things was a little awry-when you said that Bridget went back to Dorking with your wife on the morning after the murder, for example. No, don’t look alarmed, Doctor. If I were leading up to anything incriminating, I’d have a man with me and a pair of handcuffs in my pocket. It’s your son I should have charged, and I left it too damned late. I’ve more important things to do than go over evidence looking for false statements. In a way, the boy’s death closed the account for me. No further danger to the public, you see. I say, that looks a fetching plate of doughnuts. D’you fancy a pot of afternoon tea? We’ve time, you know. There’s the station, not fifty yards away.’

Prothero acquiesced and presently found himself incarcerated in a bow-fronted tea-shop, watching Sergeant Cribb devour doughnuts as if he had not eaten for a week. Possibly the facilities at the Royal College had not included lunch.

‘What was the object of your researches?’ the doctor asked, steering the conversation in a more general direction.

Cribb bolted the rest of his third doughnut, raising a finger meanwhile to indicate the imminence of a response. ‘I’m glad you asked me that. They were quite misdirected. I’m a stubborn cove, Doctor. Should have sought the advice of some authority such as yourself. Would have saved me several days’ hard work. You see, I had it in my mind that Guy’s death was-er-induced. It was just too neat to be believable. Record of asthma, inherited from his mother. Sudden attack, following a stiff ride on a horse and a heavy meal, both known to affect asthmatics. Symptoms observed by an independent witness. Post mortem evidence irrefutable.’

‘How could the boy’s death have been induced?’ said Prothero. ‘It is possible, I suppose, to arrange certain conditions which might bring on an attack of asthma, but it is most unlikely to result in death. If a patient were chronically ill anyway, I suppose it is not impossible to hasten his departure in such a way, but I have never heard of it. And Guy was quite a fit young man. Besides, this all happened in a public hotel. There were no irregular conditions. As for the horse-ride and the heavy meal, they were in no way unusual for Guy, as his headmasters, whom you appear to have been in touch with, will verify.’

‘More tea?’ said Cribb. ‘I will, I think. What you must remember, Doctor, is that I’m a layman, knowing very little about asthma and its causes.’

‘None of us knows very much.’

‘After three days with the medical books and several consultations in Harley Street,’ said Cribb, ‘I came to that conclusion myself-and I was no further on with my theory. I had to look for something else. The devil of it was that everything was settled to everyone’s satisfaction except mine. I’d thought it possible at one time that poison had been introduced, but the post mortem disposed of that explanation. There wasn’t even a mark on the body to suggest foul play. So I decided to read through all my notes and statements again, hoping something would emerge. Two things did. The first was a remark your son himself made when the three of us were taking lunch at Mutton’s, after my regrettable confusion over the bath-towel in Brill’s Baths. He made a sort of outburst, you remember, accusing you of treating him no better than his half-brother, young Jason.’

‘Certainly I remember. He was being deliberately provocative. I would not place too much reliance on anything he said if I were you, Sergeant.’

‘One of his complaints was about a bruise on his arm from an injection. The size of half a crown, I think he said. You don’t deny giving him one, Doctor?’

Prothero shook his head. ‘I’ve no reason to deny it. I injected a small quantity of atropine to relieve his asthma symptoms. It is a recognised way of preventing constriction of the bronchioles by inhibiting the action of the nervous system. Used by a physician, it is perfectly safe.’

‘So I understand, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘It’s a pity you had none with you on the day the boy died. An injection then might have saved him. But, of course, you weren’t to know. Tell me, was it on the Sunday before we met at Brill’s that you gave Guy his injection? That’s what I’ve got in my notes.’

‘Sunday? Yes, it would have been.’

‘That’s what the boy said. I can understand that he must have been in somewhat of a state that morning, with Bridget lying dead under the promenade, and your wife and second son being sent off double-quick to Dorking. I don’t believe Mrs. Prothero knew what had happened, but I’m quite sure you did. A very anxious time for Guy, and most considerate of you to give him an injection, even if he was ungrateful later in the week when I met him. I suppose you must have been in quite a wax yourself on that Sunday morning, knowing what the boy had done and wondering what to do about it. Not at all surprising that the injection should have left a bruise. Was your hand shaking, Doctor?’

‘I have no recollection,’ said Prothero.

‘I didn’t expect you to have, sir, particularly as there was no sign of the mark fourteen days after, when the boy’s body was examined. These things heal quickly, especially in the young. You don’t mind if I have the last doughnut? It’s more than I could do to leave it.’

‘What was the other thing that emerged from the statements?’

Cribb chewed heartily and used the uneaten portion of the doughnut to emphasise his points. ‘Ah, yes. The length of your holiday. Your wife said you were there for three weeks, but you stayed for four.’

‘There were things to attend to, consequent upon the death of Bridget.’

Cribb smiled. ‘I can well imagine, Doctor. But once the severed hand was discovered in the aquarium, on the Monday, there wasn’t much prospect of disposing of the body, which was already dismembered. Just time, perhaps, to bury the head somewhere else in hope of preventing identification. But by the middle of the week the rest of the parcels were found. If you’d left the town at once, suspicions might have been aroused, I agree, but you could have left quite openly at the end of the week, when your holiday was due to finish. Instead, you extended it by a week.’

‘It was only right that I should see things through, as Bridget’s employer.’

Cribb dismissed this with a quick shake of the head. ‘It was obvious to anyone that the matter had passed out of your control. Bridget was the subject of a murder inquiry, and an inquest was certain to be arranged. You could have been waiting for months if that was why you were still in Brighton. No, I think your motive was another one. You stayed there because of Guy, not Bridget. You knew he was going to die on the second Sunday after the murder. It was quite contrary to your plans that he should die at home in Dorking. There would have been no end of questions and suspicions. Instead, he died on the way home, in a public hotel, as you so rightly said.’

‘I am supposed to have known all this? How do you imagine I possessed such clairvoyance, Sergeant?’

Cribb wiped his fingers with the table-napkin. ‘No clairvoyance to it, sir. Timing, that’s all. Fourteen days from the injection, Sunday to Sunday.’

‘This is too preposterous!’ said Prothero. ‘Am I seriously supposed to have killed my own son with an injection of atropine that took effect two weeks after it was given, caused a violent death with all the symptoms of asthma and left no trace in the body? You had better spend some more time with the medical books, Sergeant. You have a lot to learn.’

‘I appreciate that, Doctor. So when I formed my suspicions, I went back to the library to read all that I could find on the subject of injections-and the deuce of a lot there is. What caught my interest in particular were the inoculation experiments being carried out by Dr. Pasteur and others. In fact, it seems that half the doctors in Europe are busy pumping germs into dogs and guinea-pigs and publishing their results.’

Dr. Prothero sighed in a long-suffering way. ‘Perhaps what you fail to appreciate, Sergeant, is that such experiments are intended to give protection against disease, in the same way as vaccination. Now that the organism responsible for typhoid fever has been discovered in Germany, for example, it is possible that we shall soon be able to inoculate the populace and so limit the spread of the disease. Experiments are already being conducted to that end.’

‘So I read, sir. But it isn’t quite so straightforward, is it? There are problems. While I was reading of these experiments I several times came across something the doctors describe as “acute respiratory shock”, which seemed to have nothing at all to do with the disease under investigation. An animal that had been injected would suddenly appear to suffer extreme difficulty in breathing, followed by convulsions which frequently ended in death. Now this interested me a lot, so I went back to Harley Street to see if someone could explain a little more about it in simple terms comprehensible to a member of the Force, such as myself.’

‘It is a phenomenon well known among doctors,’ said Prothero.

‘So I learned, sir, so I learned. But not so well known to the public. The medical profession is at pains not to reveal too much about it, since it only arises in connection with inoculation experiments. I have it on authority that a number of human patients are reported to have died in that way after experiments in Germany. It’s liable to hold up mass-inoculation by several years until it’s properly understood. But even if the doctors can’t explain why it happens, they understand the conditions that are conducive to it.’

‘The vaccines used in the German experiments were prepared with chick embryos, and the patients who died were sensitive to eggs. I don’t know where this is leading us, Sergeant.’

‘Don’t you, sir? Well, as I understand it, the kind of violent reaction the doctors call acute respiratory shock can be induced in the laboratory. It was done as early as 1839 by the famous French physiologist, Francois Magendie, injecting dogs with egg-white. He discovered that two injections of egg-white at an interval of fourteen days produced acute respiratory shock. After the second injection the dogs died within five minutes. Now the curious thing is that egg-white isn’t what you’d call a death-dealing substance. In fact, it’s usually regarded as an antidote. It was obviously something to do with the period between the injections, because dogs injected after one week suffered no effect at all. More recently, a series of experiments on guinea-pigs produced the same dramatic result when they received a second injection of dog-serum.’

‘You have been busy, Sergeant.’

‘So the German doctors now believe that the acute respiratory shock in their patients was a similar reaction. The patients who died reacted to the vaccine, as you suggest, but some two weeks before receiving the injection they had become sensitised-is that the word? — to eggs, perhaps by eating them in some form, possibly even in a cake. When they were injected with the vaccine a fortnight later, the effect was as sudden and violent as if they had been given strychnine-except, of course, that the post mortem examination showed only the kinds of symptoms associated with death from chronic asthma.’

‘Oh, it’s eggs, is it?’ said Prothero. ‘I murdered my son with a boiled egg, did I-or was it a Madeira cake?’

‘If you’ll kindly allow me to go on,’ said Cribb, ‘you’ll see that I’m suggesting no such thing. People can be sensitive to other things besides eggs. You’ll allow that asthma results from reactions to certain substances and emanations?’

‘I can hardly deny it, having written a paper on the subject. Hay, pollen, ipecacuanha, bedfeathers, house-dust. A patient may be affected by any one of these, or something else. My son was sensitive to pollen.’

‘Really, sir?’ said Cribb. ‘Now suppose an asthma patient were discovered to be vulnerable to one of the substances you mention, rather as those Germans were sensitive to egg-white, and someone injected them with a small amount of the substance. What would the result be, do you think?’

‘Quite neutral, I should think. The substances affect the breathing, not the blood.’

‘Ah, but what if a second injection were given two weeks later?’

‘That would be a dangerous thing to try, Sergeant. It might well result in the phenomenon you have described.’ Prothero leaned forward across the table, ‘But if that was how it happened, you would have found a recent injection-mark on my son’s body. There was none-in spite of the inordinately careful examination made by the doctors at the post mortem.’

‘That’s where my theory foundered,’ said Cribb, ‘until I took professional advice. I put the case to my Harley Street specialist-hypothetically, of course, with no names mentioned. If a man with the specialised knowledge of substances that cause asthma and similar conditions were to take it into his head to kill another human being, I said, and chose a victim with a known sensitivity to, say, pollen, and a history of asthma, how would he induce the phenomenon known as acute respiratory shock? By grinding the pollen to a fine powder, said my adviser and then taking a very small amount, as little as a tenth of a milligram, and injecting it into the victim, perhaps secreted in some other substance administered in the course of treatment. Then if two weeks later he were suddenly exposed to a slightly larger quantity of the substance, say a milligram, he would die within five minutes. The amounts involved would be so small as to be impossible to detect in a post mortem. Did the second quantity of the substance have to be introduced by means of an injection, I asked? No, said he, certain substances are readily absorbed by skin tissue-nettle leaf irritant, for example, or pollen.’

‘This is all very plausible,’ said Prothero, ‘but when Guy died we were not in a bed of nettles, Sergeant, nor were we coating ourselves with pollen in the hotel garden. So far as I can recollect, there were not even any flowers in the lounge.’

‘I established that, sir. Went over everything I could think of until I was ready to give up. Then, as sometimes happens, I was thinking of something quite unconnected with the case, when the very thing I needed to know flashed across my mind. It was the statement the inspector made after I arrived and found you both there with Guy’s body. He told me the answer, and I was too damned unreceptive to accept it. What were his words, sir? — “it seemed at first to be the consequence of an over-enthusiastic inhalation of snuff.” That’s how you did it, Dr. Prothero. The pollen was in the boy’s snuff-box. One inhalation was enough to kill him. You’d mixed it with the snuff that morning knowing Guy wouldn’t take any on the ride, but would probably inhale it after lunch.’

‘You’ve had the contents of the snuff-box analysed, I have no doubt,’ said Prothero.

‘I have, sir, and as you very well know there ain’t a microscope invented with sufficient power to detect a quantity of pollen as small as that, nor a chemical test to prove its presence. It’s as neat a way of ending a fellow-human’s life as I’ve ever come across. A doctor’s way.’

‘A father’s,’ said Prothero, after a pause, ‘and not neat, Sergeant.’

‘The boy would have killed again if he had lived,’ said Cribb. In their context the words were reassuring. For the first time all pretence between the two men had been abandoned. They observed each other with candour, if not respect.

‘There is a saying of Hippocrates, the founder of our profession,’ said Prothero, ‘“Extreme remedies are most appropriate for extreme diseases”. Believe me when I tell you that I did all I could for Guy while he was alive. At the last, I had to ask myself what future there was for him. I know of other cases, Sergeant, poor wretches with the same dreadful impulse for violence who are kept behind locked doors by devoted parents. Can you imagine what will happen when one of them one day finds a way to slip the latch-for they are intelligent beings as Guy was? The mayhem and the carnage will be beyond belief, Sergeant, striking terror into people’s hearts long after the poor demented creature is recaptured by the police or his wretched family. Am I exaggerating?’

‘I hope so, sir,’ said Cribb quietly. ‘I think we’d better move in the direction of the station.’

Prothero raised his eyebrows questioningly. ‘Railway-or police?’

‘I’d never be able to prove my case in court,’ said Cribb with a slight smile. ‘Damned lawyers aren’t going to get a conviction out of nothing more substantial than an extra week in Brighton. . Unless you’ve decided to make a confession. But, as I said, I didn’t bring a man with me, or the handcuffs, and it’s devilish hard to hear anything anyone says on those confounded trains. I think we’ve just time to catch that 4.23.’

Albert Moscrop finished polishing the latest example of his handiwork, a small, brass telescope with a magnification of four diameters. It represented some three weeks’ work, mainly in the evenings, after the shop was closed. He had begun on the day when he had read the newspaper report of the inquest on Bridget. She had been murdered, it had said, by a person or persons unknown, but it was understood that the police had indicated that there was nothing to be gained from further inquiries into the case.

He snapped the telescope shut and placed it on the tissue paper in a narrow wooden box on the table in front of him, making sure that the engraved name ‘Jason’ was uppermost. Then he closed the box, wrapped it, addressed it and affixed a stamp. As an afterthought, before he took it to the post-office, he turned the parcel over and wrote on the reverse, in small, neat letters, Eastbourne next year.